Angel's Ransom Read online

  It was not until the crew had left the yacht and were beyond shouting distance on the quay that he remembered the handbag on the chart table. He swore at his forgetfulness, which meant still another delay, and hurried to the pilot-house to call the men back with a blast on the airhorn. Michaud, as always, had put off starting the compressor until the last possible moment. The horn was lifeless.

  Never put to sea on a Friday, Blake thought wearily.

  Michaud’s absence at least gave him an opportunity to speed up the preparations for casting off when the crew returned. He went below to start the compressor and generator and open the valves of the heat exchanger, operations that would take the old engineer a good quarter of an hour. In ,his preoccupation with those matters, the fact that Jules and the rabbit-faced man had taken up positions conveniently near the lines that tied the cruiser’s stem to the jetty made no impression on him.

  Marian did not note the significance of the departure of the Angel’s crew until the little group of men had passed below the point where she and Holtz watched from the parapet of the Chemin des Pêcheurs. Holtz made a sound of satisfaction as he saw them go by.

  ‘Did you arrange for that?’ Marian asked.

  ‘Of course.’ He was tensely impatient of her question.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they would not have let me aboard, even in your company, without Blake’s permission, and I do not intend to ask his permission.’

  ‘Then why did you need my performance last night? If you are going aboard without his permission, and without the crew’s knowledge -’

  ‘I never needed your performance, dear Miss Ellis. I found it a convenience.’ Holtz was watching the Angel closely. Blake had just left the pilot-house to go below. ‘The good captain is as susceptible as are most mariners to a pretty girl. I manipulate you in front of his eyes to keep him from observing certain other actions.’

  ‘And suppose I were to refuse to let you manipulate me in front of his eyes any further?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I am paying you well to perform a certain function. You need the money, and in a matter of minutes you will have earned it. You will not back out now.’

  It was a calm statement of fact with which she could not argue. She said, ‘You’re right. I can’t back out. But the sooner it’s over and done with, the sooner I’ll be able to deprive myself of the pleasure of your company. Can we go now?’

  ‘You were not so eager to deprive yourself of the pleasure of my company before you met the handsome captain.’ Holtz threw the taunt over his shoulder as he led the way down the steps to the jetty. ‘What has happened to change you, dear Miss Ellis? Can it be that you have a conscience? Does the deception of a compatriot weigh so heavily on you? Or has the good captain won your heart?’

  ‘Please don’t talk to me.’

  His barking laugh was another jeer.

  She found it difficult to keep up with him on the jetty. Her heels made walking precarious on the irregular cobbles, and it was no time for a genuinely sprained ankle. Impatient at her slower progress, he took her arm and tried to hustle her along. He was tense with nerves, and muttered, ‘Quick! Quick!’ while he tugged at her arm, unable because of his small size and weight to make her move faster but keeping her awkwardly off balance on the cobbles. Her resentment toward him intensified with her knowledge that they were a spectacle, and she was briefly grateful that so few people were there to see it. Only two men loitering on the jetty near the Angel’s mooring seemed to be paying any attention to their approach.

  No one was in sight aboard the yacht. At its gangplank Holtz pushed her ahead of him and followed at her heels, crowding her impatiently until they stood together on the Angel’s deck. Only then did he relax his nervous insistence on hurry, seeming to adopt a confidence of accomplishment the moment they stepped off the head of the gangplank.

  Blake found them there when he came up the engine-room ladder. He was cleaning his hands on a piece of waste, and he indicated the grease still on his fingers as a reason for not offering his hand when Marian, playing her humiliating part, said, ‘This is my - friend, Mr Holtz. We came for my bag.’

  ‘You got here just in time,’ Blake said. ‘I’m casting off as soon as my crew comes aboard. How’s the ankle?’

  ‘Much better, thank you.’ She did not meet his eyes.

  ‘Where is the bag?’ Holtz asked.

  The little man’s question was unexpectedly peremptory. Blake said, ‘In the pilot-house. I’ll get it.’

  ‘We’d like to go with you. Wouldn’t we, my dear?’

  Marian’s ‘Yes’ was wooden, emotionless.

  Puzzled, aware of an undercurrent he did not understand, Blake looked at her for an explanation. She still avoided his eyes. He wondered if she could have brought Holtz along as a witness to the bag’s existence, as an insurance for its recovery. He could not believe that she could be so distrustful with so little reason, but both Holtz’s manner and her own bore out the conclusion that her companion was something more than a friend who was there only to keep her casual company.

  Still puzzled, he said, ‘Come along, by all means,’ and led the way. The bag was where he had left it. He stepped aside on the bridge wing to let Marian enter the pilot-house ahead of him, and was waiting for Holtz to precede him as well when the little man took a heavy Walther automatic from his coat and leveled it at Blake’s belt buckle.

  ‘You first, Captain,’ he said tautly. ‘stand over by the girl and keep quiet.’

  Blake’s mind refused, for a moment, to recognize the reality of what was happening. His first thought was that he was being made the victim of a tasteless practical joke. The gun was overlarge in Holtz’s small hand, like a clumsy toy in the hand of a child. But Holtz did not hold it clumsily, and his expression was not childlike. He had about him the air of a man who was going through a well-planned, well-rehearsed routine, and would make no mistakes.

  Blake hesitated only briefly in the face of the pointed gun, then followed Marian into the pilot-house. His perplexity was increased, rather than otherwise, by the expression of shocked incredulity on her face at the sight of the pistol. Her surprise could not have been assumed. She stared, wide-eyed, speechless.

  Holtz stood in the doorway, keeping his distance. Blake said, ‘What is this? What are you after?’

  ‘You’ll learn. Be quiet.’

  Holtz, without moving his eyes or shifting the unwavering muzzle of the Walther from its steady aim at Blake’s middle, seemed to be listening intently for something. He stood half inside, half outside the pilot-house, one foot over the storm-sill of the doorway, his head cocked back, his mouth clamped in a grimace of tense attention. Blake could hear nothing except the steady putter of the auxiliaries he had started, see nothing from where he stood except the expanse of the harbor, the cruiser’s foredeck, a part of the foredeck of the sail-boat moored alongside, and the Angel’s twin anchor chains plunging rigidly out and down from her bow. He knew that the yacht’s stern lines had been cast off when the anchor chains suddenly drooped, losing their strain, and the bow of the sailboat alongside drifted slowly backward from his line of sight.

  He said again, more demandingly, ‘What is this?’

  ‘Be quiet!’ The gun muzzle lifted to emphasize the order.

  Marian’s paralysis of will broke at the slight movement. She sounded inane even to herself when she said, ‘I -I don’t understand.’

  ‘Of course you don’t understand!’ Holtz did not shift his eyes. His complete concentration of attention on Blake while he spoke to her emphasized the contempt in his words. ‘You were never intended to understand, only to serve a purpose. You have done it admirably.’

  ‘But - but what are we doing here?’

  ‘I am here to kidnap Freddy Farr and persuade him that he has more money than he needs. You are here because you were necessary to my plans, and you are not ingenuous enough to be safely left behind to talk. Now be quiet!’

  He had
still not looked at her.

  His intense concentration of attention on Blake at the same time as he listened for whatever sound or signal he was expecting from outside the pilot-house kept him from the realization that Marian was about to scream until she took a shuddering deep breath. He moved with amazing speed then, reaching to shut the door that would muffle both scream and shot as he swung the pistol toward her. Death, ugly and unmistakable, was in his eyes. But his move to close the door before he pulled the trigger had given Blake the chance, risking a bullet, to clap his hand over Marian’s mouth and pinion her arms, locking her body against his own with her head pulled back against his shoulder, muzzled and helpless before the threat of the pistol that Holtz held leveled at her breast, his face still twisted with the barely checked impulse to kill.

  ‘Look at it!’ Blake said harshly. ‘Take a good look! If he squeezes his finger, you’re done! Do what he says!’

  He held her that way for a moment, feeling the moisture of her lips against his palm, making her face the leveled pistol, letting the truth that was in Holtz’s face penetrate before he released her. He could feel sweat prickling his skin at the narrowness of the escape.

  Holtz said thinly, ‘If your employer is as sensible as you are, Captain, we will all avoid a great deal of difficulty.’ He reached behind him to open the door, his eyes again intent on Blake. To Marian, he said, ‘You are even more stupid than I believed you to be. Do not challenge me carelessly again.’ The tension that gripped the little gunman did not make the big Walther waver in his hand, nor interfere with his alert attentiveness for the sound he was waiting for. It came at last when they heard the grind and grumble of the diesels starting up in the engine-room. First one motor, then the other, turned over, caught, fired and settled down to its steady mutter.

  Blake felt the familiar pulse of power in the cruiser’s hull with an unfamiliar sinking of the heart. That moment, when the motors were started and the Angel took on life of its own, was the moment its captain assumed command and the responsibilities of command. Ashore, Freddy Farr and his guests were no concern of Blake’s. Afloat, they were in his charge, the guarantee of their safety his duty. The Angel’s passengers were his to defend against a man who had already shown his willingness to kill at the smallest evidence of opposition.

  Holtz shifted his position in the doorway to bring the wheel more directly under the threat of his weapon.

  ‘Take the controls, Captain,’ he said. ‘We are about to put to sea, according to schedule.’

  ‘I can’t put to sea without a crew,’ Blake said. ‘It’s out of the question. Shooting me won’t weigh anchor.’

  ‘You have a crew.’ Holtz nodded at the foredeck, still without moving his watchful eyes.

  Blake thought, So Cesar was right after all. Jules, the big Provençal of the permis, was at the bow winch maneuvering the Angel away from the jetty on her anchor chains. It was skillfully done, better than the Angel’s own deck-hands could have managed it, with the port anchor weighed first and the cruiser brought about on her starboard mooring until she lay with both anchors weighed and her bow pointed toward the harbor entrance. Jules dogged the chains efficiently, shut off the winch, and came swinging up the pilot-house ladder to the bridge wing.

  ‘All secure,’ he said to Holtz. ‘We’d better get under way. Those boobs need only about five minutes more to find out they’ve been taken in.’

  ‘Where’s Roche?’

  ‘Standing by for trouble below. They’re all sleeping like babies, so far.’

  Jules squeezed by Holtz in the doorway. Without coming into the line of fire he pulled the plug of the radiophone handset and stuffed handset, connecting wire and plug into his pocket.

  ‘I’ll clean up the rest here when we’re out of the harbor,’ he said tensely. ‘Let’s go. I’m nervous.’

  ‘We are all nervous.’ Holt gestured with the Walther. ‘But careful. Take the wheel, Captain.’

  Blake was given little time to make a decision whether to comply or not to comply. As he hesitated, Jules emphasized Holtz’s order with a shove. The big sailor was a powerful man, and the unexpected push slammed Blake against the wheel with enough force to hurt. Without animosity, Jules said, ‘Look sharp when you’re given an order, Captain, and you won’t get hurt. Now let’s see how you work those controls. No tricks. I know a few myself.’

  Blake accepted the inescapable. He put both motors at slow ahead and swung the cruiser’s bow toward the spire of Sainte-Devoté, at the farthest reach of the harbor. The Angel moved out into open water.

  The passage between the twin jetties that formed the harbor breakwater was a good hundred meters wide, but the tumbled concrete blocks that formed the jetties’ foundations made navigation within 10 or 15 meters of the end of either jetty hazardous for any craft larger than a rowboat. It was purely automatic with Blake to take the Angel well wide before coming about for the approach to the sea. He was not consciously thinking of submarine menaces to navigation.

  The trap in which he found himself was a tight one. Jules carried a pistol pushed into the waistband of his dungarees, but even without it, and Holtz’s weapon to back him up, he would be formidable to handle. He stood now at Blake’s shoulder, watching the operation of the controls with close interest. Holtz had come into the pilot-house to stand guard somewhere back of Jules, out of Blake’s line of sight, and Marian had retreated into a corner from which she watched him with an intent, steady air of expectation that was as pressing as a demand.

  He thought bitterly, Don’t look to me for heroics, girl. I didn’t get us into this, but he could not bring himself to focus his anger against her. The surge of slow rage inside him was for Holtz; sneering, arrogant, contemptuous little Holtz, with his well-planned trap and the big gun that made him master. Blake’s bitterness and frustration came to a boil when he brought the cruiser’s bow around to put it at the passage between the jetties, and saw in that moment the Angel’s way of escape.

  He opened both motors up to cruising speed, not hurrying, not thinking beyond the immediate movements of his hands, knowing that his nerve would fail if he thought ahead. They were running fair at the harbor mouth, well clear of its hidden teeth, heading for the open sea that sparkled beyond the breakwater. Marian still watched him from her corner, as intently expectant as before, waiting for the effort he supposed she had known he would have to make even before he knew it himself. He cried silently at her, It’s all I can do! and spun the wheel to starboard, putting the yacht squarely at the end of the south jetty and the man-made reef that would rip her bottom out.

  Jules’s reactions were swift, for a big man. But he clubbed at Blake’s head with one fist while he fought to back the wheel with his other hand, instead of putting his full strength and weight on the wheel, and Blake accepted the punishment to hold to the spokes, grimly keeping his head down to take Jules’s blows, painful but ineffectual, on his skull, willing the Angel to its destruction while he waited for the crash of Holtz’s pistol and the tearing shock of a bullet, knowing even in his fear of death the triumphant thought, You’re beaten, little man! You’re beaten! until a shattering blow over the kidneys loosened his muscles and sent him sagging to his knees, clawing ineffectually at the wheel that spun away from him. Another calculated, agonizing blow, and a third, sprawled him on the deck, only dimly conscious of Holtz standing over him with the Walther clubbed to strike again but hearing with acute clarity Marian’s voice say, with loathing, ‘You revolting little beast!’ and the sharp crack of another blow that was not aimed at him. Then the Angel was heeling, sharply, more sharply still as the drum of the motors changed. There was a moment of taut uncertainty, then Jules’s deep, relieved growl, ‘We made it. We’re clear.’

  The Angel’s motion changed as she accepted the rolling movement of the open sea. The first rocking plunge of her bow took Blake down with it, into oblivion.

  TWO

  The crew of the Angel did not leave the Bureau de la Sûreté Publique
as they had entered the building, in a group. Cesar burst through the door first, running hard for the harbor. The others, old Michaud still stubbornly refusing to be hurried, caught up with him on the Quai du Commerce, where he stood cursing steadily at the sight of the Angel pointed for the Mediterranean. Together they watched the yacht approach the mouth of the harbor, veer unexpectedly toward the south jetty, hang for moments on the edge of catastrophe, then clear the danger and slip out to sea.

  ‘Beached, by God!’ Michaud said darkly. ‘I would not have believed it of the captain! Money corrupts all that it touches!’

  ‘Beached, my eye!’ Cesar’s reply was hot. ‘Are you so thick that you can’t see we were tricked ashore by those two gangsters so they could seize the yacht while we were out of the way? They have knocked the captain over the head and are falling over their heels to make a getaway!’

  ‘You read too many detective stories.’

  ‘And you too much political puff! How do you explain the near wreck in the harbor mouth, if the captain is still in command? Or does a yacht take the bit in its teeth and shy like a runaway horse? Eh? Eh?’

  ‘The probable truth - I say probable, because I am not gifted with the positive insight granted to those who know everything –’ Michaud took out his pipe and stoked it with irritating calm - ‘the probable truth is that the writ we have all been expecting from day to day to take the Angel into court has made its appearance, and Farr has ordered a departure while departure is still possible. The rights of his crew are of little importance compared to the safety of his property. It is always so with the rich.’

  The cook said, ‘Just the same, the law is the law. We are not discharged until we are paid up and signed off. He must still pay us wages.’

  ‘All we have to do is collect them,’ one of the deckhands said. ‘And what about our gear? I am not as lucky as some, to have come away with my pipe.’